Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Last Saturday was my best friends second bridal shower. I shall not get into how I feel about there being a second shower, especially since it was a "personal" shower (i.e. everyone, including elderly relatives, had to bring panties + lingerie for the bride), parties take a massive toll on my health, and the fact that I had already put approx. 50+ hours into my gift for the first shower. I will let you draw your own conclusions about my mood that day.... I feel I should mention this second shower was not the brides decision. She is such a lovely person and good friend, and it was for that reason that I attended (albeit, under-protest). Anyways, enough grumbling!

I wasn't sure what one wears to a panty-party, but I figured a vintage nightgown set was a good choice. This soft mint green nightgown+jacket is so comfortable and I'm pretty sure everyone just thought it was a dress. With the surging prices on vintage dresses, vintage nightwear is a relatively cheap alternative and can be styled to look dress-like. I paired mine with a thin black belt, vintage-style hat, and some striped flats.

Suffering with chronic illness means parties are hard. Like, really hard. I'm still recovering days later, even though I took 2 days beforehand to rest up. I'm also recovering from a hand/wrist strain that happened last week. Recovering is so boring! I'm limited with what I can do with my hands at the moment so my normal diversions are off-limits (including video editing). Luckily, I have a touchscreen computer so I can still read blogs and look at instagram without the hand-strain caused by using a mouse. Hopefully in a few days, I will be back to normal.

I did finish some knitting projects before the hand-strain (actually, I'm still doing a little bit of knitting as it helps to loosen up my hands and isn't what caused the injury in the first place). The first project finished was this Edwardian sweater. The pattern is a free one from a 1918 "Columbia Books of Yarns". I mistakenly knit the entire sweater on the wrong sized needles (whoops!), but it turned out ok in the end. The arms are a bit snug/short, but the sweater is still very wearable and I prefer 3/4 or 1/2 length sleeves anyways.

This was the original illustration for the pattern:

Yeah... mine didn't really turn out like the picture. Oh well. Live and learn.

I love the yarn I used on the cuffs/collar, but I would never use the main yarn again. The splits, pills, and matted bits in the yarn ruined the smoothness of my knitting. It was a mess and it does make the sweater look less well knit than it is. The camera shows up the yarn flaws more than it looks in person, so I still plan on wearing it, just perhaps not on days when I will be photographed. For more details on the project, check out my ravelry project page.

The other project I finished is a 1950's bolero. It's so cute but I have yet to photograph it, so stay tuned for that!

Thursday, July 13, 2017

I recently returned from a lovely few days up at the family cottage. There was lot of swimming, yarn shopping, and coffee sipping, and it was glorious. It was a surprisingly busy and exhausting week but somehow it managed to be refreshing as well.

I didn't really take any outfit shots while I was up there, but I did have to take some photos of my new bathing suit. Yup... I now have an Edwardian-style swimsuit. I knew I needed a new swimsuit this year and opted to make something a little more covered up than my previous 1940's bikini. The reason? Well, mainly because the lake is always freezing plus I think Victorian/Edwardian bathing suits are adorable. I had a friend who used to always wear a wet suit to go swimming in the lake, so I figured this is just a cuter version of that.

The material has a great texture and looks a bit like wool on one side, but it actually very similar to modern swimsuit material. It's super comfy and stretchy enough to make movement easy. I did plan on doing some real swimming in this thing so I worked hard to make sure it was a functional garment. I didn't actually wear the tights or ribbon belt for swimming, but the rest of it made for an excellent swimming costume. The only downside is that it takes forever to dry out.

I researched a lot of historical suits styles before designing mine. In the end, I opted for an Edwardian suit rather than Victorian (it seemed a little more practical). Most suits also seemed to have a sailor collar, so I felt that detail was a must-have on my suit. While most of the original suits were not black, this fabric was on a very good sale so I opted to add in colour with the trim instead. My main inspiration was the swim costume top-left in the below image:

I'm sure I looked quite a sight floating around in a giant swan in my Edwardian bathing costume...

You may have already seen part of my Canada Day outfit on instagram, but I thought I would repost the uncropped versions here. I wore this the day we left for the cottage and snapped a few quick pictures after loading up the car. I was hot, grumpy, and tired when these photos were taken, but hopefully it doesn't show too much.